Hap Shaughnessy

Hap Shaughnessy (Gordon Pinsent) is the water taxi captain of Possum Lake, and is also the teller of extremely tall tales. At virtually every opportunity, Hap makes a wild and unbelievable claim to have done something extraordinary, to have some special status in the world, etc. No matter how impossible or improbable the claim, if Hap can claim to have done it, he will.

Key segments

 * Ask the Experts
 * Auto Biography

Claims to fame
Among many other things, Hap has claimed:

(Extremely sketchy, needs work)


 * That he ran a tiger ranch in Kenya. (Wind-Powered Boat).
 * That he invented basketball.
 * That he has worked for the CIA (multiple episodes)
 * That he knows what real Martians look like (and that revealing their appearance may compromise national security).
 * That he can tell a "metalique" explosive device from ordinary farm equipment.
 * That he was blasted out of a cannon and flew 88 miles into the atmosphere with a cape.
 * That he brought down a whale with his bare hands after hanging on to it for "ten, twenty months".
 * That he was in a movie with Meryl Streep.
 * That he "hit it big" in Hollywood.
 * That he performed in a circus and courted the bearded lady.
 * That he owned the actual car that the original James Bond drove, complete with machine guns and cyanide gas.
 * That he experienced a near-death experience, then served as the technical advisor for the movie Ghost.
 * That Mona Lisa (the person) had been in the Shaugnessy family for generations